Today I was faced with the killer of the majority of attempts at habit formations: Needing to create motivation without inspiration.
I have done nothing all week. I’ve been sick with the flu and only started feeling better yesterday. I had lost my inertia. I’ve been riding my bike or running almost every day, meditating several times per week. Journal or blog on a frequent basis. I had done none of it for about seven days. Today I looked at my running shoes and felt no drive to put them on at all. Is a week all that is needed to go back to running on fumes?
Thinking back, this has killed great running streaks so many times. I’ve stopped practicing the piano for an embarrassingly long time. I hardly ran at all in 2019 except for several races and a few dozen fitness sessions. I’ve gone through periods where I let my house and room get dirty. Despite loving cooking, I’ve ordered out for many weeks in a row at tons of points in my life.
Something generally happens that throws off the routine, even if it was a routing kept for a year or longer. It could be vacation, sickness, change in stress levels, social issues, etc.
The big example I have: In the first half of 2015, I was in decent shape, wasn’t drinking to excess, ate healthy, was in school full time and working around 30hrs. These habits had taken years to build up to. That summer I went to Europe for the better part of August (partly by cruise ship with an open bar). I destroyed all of my good habits by the time I got back. I hit the buffets and the open bar. I tasted anything Europe would let me eat. I probably burned it all off walking around Munich, Venice, etc. But I stopped being mindful about what I was eating and drinking – for years.
By February 2016 I was a college graduate working full time. I hadn’t been exercising since before Europe. I had new disposable income. I moved back near my hometown for work and reconnected with other working-professional friends. My job was stressful and I had not learned how to deal with it. I was not in a permanent structured environment like school anymore. I had a 24/25 year olds idea of what being an ‘adult’ was. I think a lot of my peers were in various stages of unhappiness and trying to find themselves out too.I spent a lot of this time drinking, grilling, and playing video games. Pretty much for two years. Thinking back, I don’t know if I made a single good habit during this time frame.
March 2018, I finally took a look at where I was and sat down and calculated just how quickly I could turn my life back around, and what I’d have to do to get there. I made a habit of tracking what I ate, I resolved to run or work out 5 days per week. I quit drinking. I got a scale and created an excel log book and measured everything.
By September 2018, my months of dedicated effort paid off, I lost all the weight I put on and was pretty much as fast as I had ever been. Unfortunately most of these habits fell by the wayside slowly over the next few months except for the mindful eating habits.
I know there was a day that I practiced the piano last, I can’t recall exactly which day. On that day I didn’t resolve to stop playing the piano. Same with running in 2019. I never just picked a day. But I know there was a day that I skipped. And then I skipped the next one, and the one after.
Today I noticed that I felt those feelings and I just powered through it. When I got back home from the run, I noticed that I had motivation to write this blog post too. I guess motivation begets motivation. Writing this just got me thinking about how silly it is to quit a habit or postpone a goal because the habit isn’t on schedule and the inspiration to keep going is missing.
Metaphor time I am going to relate it to a car because that’s how it makes sense to me.
Motivation is kind of like getting a car going. The first gear, and most amount of effort, is required just to get moving. Once you’re cruising you switch it into a higher gear and can coast off the initial effort a bit easier.
Sometimes you get a burst of inspiration, such as a New Year’s resolution energy, or meeting someone who makes you want to be a better person. That is like starting the car on a hill and letting it get a little momentum from gravity. But it’s not always like that, and that’s okay, you just have to get started and the gearing will make it easier later.
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